Town Square

Emergency Rally for Childrens Health Care

Original post made
by Elaine Elbizri, Midtown,
on Oct 3, 2007

Please pass this information on to friends, neighbors, families and supporters of health care for children.

You may have heard on the news this morning that President Bush has vetoed a bill that would provide Health Care for millions of children - SCHIP. Both Democrats and Repblicans support this bill with a majority in both Houses. Rallies are being held throughout the country to protest this veto and call on congress to reverse the President's veto.

I am co-hosting a Rally to protest this Veto at Lytton Plaza, University Avenue Palo Alto. The Raging Grannies (and Grandpas) are truly raging. This is one of hundreds of demonstrations organized by MoveOn and supported by TrueMajority, and USAction. The rally will march to Congresswoman Anna Eshoo's office to give her our support and ask her to do everything she can to reverse the President's veto.

Your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues can join this protest and/or write to you congressperson to support this emergency effort to reverse the veto.

Posted by Walter_E_Wallis
a resident of Midtown
on Oct 3, 2007 at 1:19 pm

The vetoed bill was to provide insurance for children, not health care. No one lacks health care in this country, nor has anyone in my lifetime. The many diverse ways that care was distributed gave us the best health care in the world. Tha vetoed bill would have been just one more tax disproportionately levied on the poor that it was proported to help.

As I just posted on the latest rendition of Elaine's post...this was vetoed because the "poor" who would qualify make up to $80,000/year, the "children" are up to age 25.

Anna Eshoo et al..stop it. Support a bill that is for the poor and the kids, and then you will get it. It is YOU, Anna et al, who have put the truly poor and true kids at risk of losing some health coverage here, not Bush. You are just mad because it is the first time he has used his veto pen at all for anything the Democrats have wanted in health care or education. It is never enough, is it?

No thanks. Political maneuvering pure and simple in the never ending push toward govt taking over all health insurance. ( The same people who complain the loudest about the bad way govt manages every other health insurance plan we have ...like Medicare...want govt to do it for ALL of us???)

Posted by Anna
a resident of University South
on Oct 4, 2007 at 11:54 am

The 80k is for a family of four.

The real problem with the bill is that may families with children currently covered by private insurance will be incentivized to switch to the government funded insurance by the bill. The CBO says that about a third of the newly convered kids will be in this category.

This is problematic for at least two reasons:

First, with all the other needs of the poor, it seems unwise to be spending money for insurance coverage people are obtaining without taxpayer help.

Second, I think in the long run the incremental approach to full government control of our healthcare system is unwise. If we're going to have a single payer system (or other heavily government controlled system), it's much more likely to be effective if it is dont with some sort of overall plan...not step-by-step, which this bill is a part of.

I'm no fan of Bush (and even laugh a bit at this opportunity to bash him by the demonstrations Elaine E is organizing). But he's probably doing us a favor by vetoing this bill.

I am completely appalled at any assumption that we even need "national health insurance" because it is all so expensive.

Look at Kaiser..they just sent an ad out that an entire family, no matter how big, can get decent coverage for $500/month. Any one individual, depending on age, can get coverage for as little as $75 per month.

This, in an era of $75 monthly cell phone bills, $100 sneakers, $3.00 coffees.. tells me that coverage is NOT too expensive for the vast majority of Americans. It is only that 1) people are unwilling to prioritize their spending and 2) people want much more than they are willing to pay for, and they believe that they will "get more" if "the government" pays for it.

If Kaiser isn't good enough for you, then there is no way any govt run plan will be.

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